[TheClimate.Vote] September 3, 2018 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Mon Sep 3 10:53:49 EDT 2018
/September 3, 2018/
[video - check your local waterway]
*Green slime oozes into Florida midterm election
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FbqFlD7MjQ>*
CNN - Published on Aug 28, 2018
Thick green algae is devastating Florida's Treasure Coast, a health
hazard that has become a key issue in the state's midterm election.
CNN's Jennifer Gray reports.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FbqFlD7MjQ
[Encouraging innovation]
*Dual-layer solar cell sets record for efficiently generating power
<https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180830180056.htm>*
Date: August 30, 2018
Source: UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
Summary: Materials scientists have developed a highly efficient
thin-film solar cell that generates more energy than typical solar
panels, thanks to its double-layer design...
- - - -
The team's new cell converts 22.4 percent of the incoming energy from
the sun, a record in power conversion efficiency for a perovskite-CIGS
tandem solar cell. The performance was confirmed in independent tests at
the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
(The previous record, set in 2015 by a group at IBM's Thomas J. Watson
Research Center, was 10.9 percent.) The UCLA device's efficiency rate is
similar to that of the poly-silicon solar cells that currently dominate
the photovoltaics market.
The research, which was published today in Science, was led by Yang
Yang, UCLA's Carol and Lawrence E. Tannas Jr. Professor of Materials
Science.
"With our tandem solar cell design, we're drawing energy from two
distinct parts of the solar spectrum over the same device area," Yang
said. "This increases the amount of energy generated from sunlight
compared to the CIGS layer alone."
- -
"Our technology boosted the existing CIGS solar cell performance by
nearly 20 percent from its original performance," Yang said. "That means
a 20 percent reduction in energy costs."
He added that devices using the two-layer design could eventually
approach 30 percent power conversion efficiency. That will be the
research group's next goal.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180830180056.htm
[maximum combustion moment- no sound]
*Burning Man Burns 2018 <https://youtu.be/m18rR50UEi4?t=9m30s>*
ThatWitchNeverWas
Published on Sep 1, 2018
2018 Burning Man Burns, from their official live stream 09/01/18
https://youtu.be/m18rR50UEi4?t=9m30s
[Book announcement Sept 25th]
*This Is the Way the World Ends: How Droughts and Die-offs, Heat Waves
and Hurricanes Are Converging on America Hardcover - September 25, 2018
<https://www.amazon.com/This-Way-World-Ends-Hurricanes/dp/1250160464>*
by Jeff Nesbit (Author)
Publisher's blurb:
"With This is the Way the World Ends Jeff Nesbit has delivered an
enlightening - and alarming - explanation of the climate challenge
as it exists today. Climate change is no far-off threat. It's
impacting communities all over the world at this very moment, and we
ignore the scientific reality at our own peril. The good news? As
Nesbit underscores, disaster is not preordained. The global
community can meet this moment - and we must." -Senator John Kerry
A unique view of climate change glimpsed through the world's
resources that are disappearing.
The world itself won't end, of course. Only ours will: our
livelihoods, our homes, our cultures. And we're squarely at the
tipping point.
Longer droughts in the Middle East. Growing desertification in China
and Africa. The monsoon season shrinking in India. Amped-up heat
waves in Australia. More intense hurricanes reaching America. Water
wars in the Horn of Africa. Rebellions, refugees and starving
children across the globe. These are not disconnected events. These
are the pieces of a larger puzzle that environmental expert Jeff
Nesbit puts together
Unless we start addressing the causes of climate change and stop
simply navigating its effects, we will be facing a series of
unstoppable catastrophes by the time our preschoolers graduate from
college. Our world is in trouble - right now. This Is the Way the
World Ends tells the real stories of the substantial impacts to
Earth's systems unfolding across each continent. The bad news?
Within two decades or so, our carbon budget will reach a point of no
return.
But there's good news. Like every significant challenge we've
faced-from creating civilization in the shadow of the last ice age
to the Industrial Revolution-we can get out of this box canyon by
understanding the realities and changing the worn-out climate
conversation to one that's relevant to every person. Nesbit provides
a clear blueprint for real-time, workable solutions we can tackle
together.
https://www.amazon.com/This-Way-World-Ends-Hurricanes/dp/1250160464
- - - - -
[KIRKUS REVIEW]
THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS
*How Droughts and Die-Offs, Heat Waves and Hurricanes Are Converging on
America
<https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jeff-nesbit/this-is-the-way-the-world-ends/>*
by Jeff Nesbit
A passionate overview of human-induced global warming whose effect on
climate, agriculture, ecosystems, and extinction is approaching a point
of no return.
In 30 short yet detailed chapters, journalist Nesbit (Poison Tea: How
Big Oil and Big Tobacco Invented the Tea Party and Captured the GOP,
2016)-a former White House communications official who is now the
executive director of Climate Nexus - explains the science behind
climate change, how it affects specific nations today, and the far more
dismal afflictions that are just around the corner unless nations can
get their acts together. The 10 hottest years in human history have
occurred since the turn of the century. The major cause, atmospheric
carbon dioxide, is not only rising faster than ever, but will continue
to rise for decades after we stop adding to it-which we are doing at an
alarming rate. Shrinking ice at the Earth's poles may be of less concern
than the vanishing snowpack and glaciers at the so-called "Third Pole":
the Himalayas, which serve as a source of water for over 1 billion
people. Readers may find modest hope in the obligatory how-to-fix-it
final chapters. Many world leaders worry about climate change, and some
are trying to help. This is not the case in the United States, where,
bizarrely, the subject has become politicized. Democrats accept its
reality, and Nesbit praises former President Barack Obama for his
warnings, neglecting to add that he took no action. Still, this is
preferable to Congressional Republicans who consider it a liberal
affectation. Thus, offended on discovering a CIA research project on the
effect of global warming on national security, they cut off funding.
An above-average example of the stream of similar books pouring off the
presses. That there is a large audience for this genre is a cause for
optimism-perhaps the only one.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jeff-nesbit/this-is-the-way-the-world-ends/
[more risk to come]
*California has 129 million dead trees. That's a huge wildfire risk.
<https://www.vox.com/2018/9/1/17800358/california-mendocino-wildfire-dead-trees>*
But no one can afford to cut them all down.
By Umair Irfan Updated Sep 1, 2018, 10:27am EDT
The die-off, meanwhile, that's created so much fuel is a symptom of the
years-long drought that has parched the Western United States. With
limited water, trees have shriveled up or succumbed to bark beetle
infestations, with some of the most severe declines in central
California. And as the climate warms and more people move into high-risk
areas, the damages from wildfires are projected to increase...
- - - -
Which means forest fires are not due to environmental terrorist groups,
as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke suggested, nor are they due to logging
companies cutting down fire-resistant trees, as some activists have
claimed, nor are they due to landowners opposing prescribed burns (and
it's definitely not "water foolishly being diverted into the Pacific
Ocean").
The big failure is that the US has not put in the time and money needed
to be able to live next to forests, harvest the trees, and reduce
wildfire risks. There is no coherent vision across all levels of
government, and conflicting priorities like forest preservation and
property protection have exacerbated fire risks. "The idea of caring for
a forest is much like caring for a garden," Geissler said. "You have to
invest in it to keep it healthy."
https://www.vox.com/2018/9/1/17800358/california-mendocino-wildfire-dead-trees
[Youth own tomorrow]
*The Swedish 15-year-old who's cutting class to fight the climate crisis
<https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/01/swedish-15-year-old-cutting-class-to-fight-the-climate-crisis?CMP=fb_gu>*
Following Sweden's hottest summer ever, Greta Thunberg decided to go on
school strike at the parliament to get politicians to act
Every day for two weeks, Thunberg has been sitting quietly on the
cobblestones outside parliament in central Stockholm, handing out
leaflets that declare: "I am doing this because you adults are shitting
on my future."
Thunberg herself is a diminutive girl with pigtails and a fleeting smile
- not the stereotypical leader of a climate revolution.
"I am doing this because nobody else is doing anything. It is my moral
responsibility to do what I can," she says. "I want the politicians to
prioritise the climate question, focus on the climate and treat it like
a crisis."
When people tell her she should be at school, she points to the
textbooks in her satchel.
- - - -*
**"Greta is a troublemaker, she is not listening to adults. But we are
heading full speed for a catastrophe, and in this situation the only
reasonable thing is to be unreasonable."*
There are signs that more Swedes are listening. The Green party, a
partner in the centre-left coalition government, was languishing in the
polls before the country was hit by more than 60 forest fires, which
raged for weeks through a rural tinderbox created by the unprecedented
drought. Now the party's support is up by half to about 6%.
Sweden's reindeer at risk of starvation after summer drought
Read more
"I am very impressed by Greta's courage and determination," says Janine
Alm Ericson, a Green member of parliament.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/sep/01/swedish-15-year-old-cutting-class-to-fight-the-climate-crisis?CMP=fb_gu
- - - - -
[Brief, plain word essay]
*Greta Thunberg: "Sweden is not a Role Model"
<https://medium.com/@wedonthavetime/greta-thunberg-sweden-is-not-a-role-model-6ce96d6b5f8b>*
15-year-old Greta Thunberg sits down outside the Swedish parliament
every day until the Swedish election - for the climate. Here is her own
strong and apprehensive text about the climate crisis and our ineptitude
to deal with it:
I want to feel safe.
When I walk home late at night.
When I sit on the subway.
When I sleep at night.
But I don't feel safe.
How am I supposed to feel safe when I know that we are facing the
most acute crisis in the history of mankind? When I know that if we
don't act now, everything will soon be too late?
The first time I heard about global warming, I thought: that can't
be right, no way there is something serious enough to threaten our
very existence.
Because otherwise, we would not be talking about anything else. As
soon as you turn on the TV, everything would be about this issue.
Headlines, radio, newspapers. You would never read or hear about
anything else.
As if a world war was raging.
But in fact, no one was talking…
And if they did, it was never in line with the scientists'
statements. The other day I watched a debate between party leaders
on TV and saw how they were allowed to stand there and lie. They
said it made no sense to make an effort to curb Sweden's emissions,
since we were such a "role model". That we should focus on "helping"
other countries to cut their emissions.
Sweden is not a role model. The people of Sweden yearly emits 11
tonnes of CO2 per capita. We're on eighth place in the world
according to WWF.
We're the ones who need help.
I don't understand how they can be allowed to lie like that on TV.
Maybe many grown-ups think the issue of climate change is difficult
to understand? Maybe that's why, whenever there's a television
program about the climate, it turns into children's television? I
grasped the issue of climate change when I was 12 and decided to
never fly again, nor eat meat.
The climate crisis is the defining issue of our time. Yet everyone
believes that we can solve the crisis without effort, without sacrifice.
"Think positive!" everybody says.
As if the passengers on Titanic, after the collision with the ice
berg, would have sat down to talk about what stories the survivors
could tell and how famous they would be. Or the number of jobs that
would be created in the effort to help the survivors.
However, the ship would have sunk anyway, no matter their actions.
We can, on the other hand, stop the collision. We know the ice berg
is there. We even know its exact coordinates. But we're not slowing
down, nor are we changing course. And so we praise ourselves,
perhaps, for having managed to unload some weight. While increasing
the speed.
Will we slow down in time?
If I live to be 100 I will be alive in the year 2103.
When you think about "the future" today, you don't think beyond the
year 2050. By then I will, in the best case, not even have lived
half my life. What happens next?
The year 2078 I will celebrate my 75th anniversary. If I have
children and grandchildren they may want to celebrate that day with
me. Maybe I will tell them about you? How do you want to be remembered?
What you do or don't do, right now, will affect my entire life, and
the lives of my children and grandchildren. Maybe they'll ask why
you did nothing, and why those who knew and could speak out, didn't.
The above text is written by Greta Thunberg and translated from Swedish
by We Don't Have Time. It is published with Greta Thunberg's approval.
Web site: www.wedonthavetime.org
https://medium.com/@wedonthavetime/greta-thunberg-sweden-is-not-a-role-model-6ce96d6b5f8b
[quick printed overview]
*The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model
<https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html>*
Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It
by Christopher Paul, Miriam Matthews
Since its 2008 incursion into Georgia (if not before), there has been a
remarkable evolution in Russia's approach to propaganda. The country has
effectively employed new dissemination channels and messages in support
of its 2014 annexation of the Crimean peninsula, its ongoing involvement
in the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria, and its antagonism of NATO
allies. The Russian propaganda model is high-volume and multichannel,
and it disseminates messages without regard for the truth. It is also
rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to
consistency. Although these techniques would seem to run counter to the
received wisdom for successful information campaigns, research in
psychology supports many of the most successful aspects of the model.
Furthermore, the very factors that make the firehose of falsehood
effective also make it difficult to counter. Traditional
counterpropaganda approaches will likely be inadequate in this context.
More effective solutions can be found in the same psychology literature
that explains the surprising success of the Russian propaganda model and
its messages.
Recommendations:
*- Forewarn audiences of misinformation, or merely reach them first
with the truth, rather than retracting or refuting false "facts."**
**- Prioritize efforts to counter the effects of Russian propaganda,
and focus on guiding the propaganda's target audience in more
productive directions.**
**- Compete with Russian propaganda. Both the United States and NATO
have the potential to prevent Russia from dominating the information
environment.**
**- Increase the flow of information that diminishes the
effectiveness of propaganda, and, in the context of active
hostilities, attack the means of dissemination.*
https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
[19 games]
*Games & Simulations - Weather, Climate, Atmosphere
<https://scied.ucar.edu/games-sims-weather-climate-atmosphere>*
This page is a directory of educational games, simulations, and virtual
labs related to Weather, Climate, Atmospheric Science, and the Sun and
Space Weather.
This list is a subset of a collection of links to games, simulations,
and virtual labs that span a larger range of STEM (Science, Technology,
Engineering & Math) education topics.
https://scied.ucar.edu/games-sims-weather-climate-atmosphere
- - -- -
For instance: https://authoring.concord.org/sequences/388
Climate and Carbon Cycle Models - http://climatemodels.uchicago.edu/
Mitigation simulator
https://www.koshland-science-museum.org/explore-the-science/interactives/mitigation-simulator
[Nice comic rant - 5 min]
*Lewis Black on Climate Change
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpJPOtxTkuU>*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpJPOtxTkuU
*This Day in Climate History - September 3, 2008
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdSsOnVWhic> - from D.R. Tucker*
September 3, 2008: In his address to the Republican National Convention
in St. Paul, Minnesota, former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael
Steele blows off concerns about climate change by proclaiming: "Drill,
baby, drill!"
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/09/03/steele-gives-gop-delegates-new-cheer-drill-baby-drill/tab/article/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdSsOnVWhic
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